Hans Staats: Re-envisioning The Devil-Doll: Child’s Play and the Modern Horror Film

Greetings to all of our readers and contributors, and welcome to Issue # 11 of The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies. This will be the last issue edited by ourselves, Bernice Murphy and Elizabeth McCarthy. We're delighted to say that journal stalwarts Jenny McDonnell and Dara Downey will be taking over as joint editors. When we published our first issue, back in October 2006, we did so with the strong belief that a free-access online journal dedicated to Gothic and Horror studies was a much-needed resource for academics and non-academics alike. Since then the journal has gone from strength to strength. This would not have been possible without the great team of people who have given their time and talent to the project.

The journal is now 6 years old, and in that time, we're very proud to have worked with such an efficient and hard-working team of section editors. We'd therefore like to thank Dara, Jenny and Eoin, as well as all of our article contributors, and our many reviewers. We'd especially like to thank all of our regular contributors and peer reviewers. We know that the journal is in very safe hands and that its new editors have lots of exciting ideas about updating it. We can't wait to see what issue #12 has in store! With this in mind, we would like to stress that submissions, etc, will proceed as usual.

26 de junho de 2012

Reports of the typewriter’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Newspapers all over the world might run headlines of their extinction (“Last Typewriter Factory Left in the World Closes Its Doors!”), but hey: newspaper editors love stories about extinction, as long as they’re not about newspapers. Even now, small office supply companies quietly manufacture typewriters, and boutique businesses now devote themselves to restoring the old beasts like prized antiques. As recently as 2009, the New York City Police Department spent close to $1 million on typewriters (though this is more evidence of gross inefficiency, probably), and “type-ins”—special evenings where people gather to tap out hand-typed letters—are becoming big amongst hipsters.

Using typewriters remind us of an era where gentlemen still remembered how to write: in full words, and not just emoticons and shortcuts. With a typewriter, there is no room for CTRL+X or CTRL+V, and less chance to regret what you wrote. Every word, every sentence and every paragraph has to be considered, typed slowly and in logical, sequential order. No room for typos. As Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Robert A. Caro once said: “One reason I type is it simply makes me feel closer to my words. It’s like being a cabinetmaker. It’s like laying down the planks. This is the way it’s supposed to feel.” Here are some other gentlemen of letters, fond of the hand-typed manuscript.

Cynics will say they sold out, surrendering to the siren song of riches as e-sales exceed p-sales for a growing number of authors, giving an adrenalin boost to dwindling fortunes. Certainly the writer who does not respond positively to that song falls into Dr. Johnson’s classic characterization of “Blockhead”.

But is money their only motive? Did these men and women of the highest integrity simply sell their souls for a pot of lucre? Or was there some other reason they heeded the call to go digital?

The longer fanfics are serialised, with the popular ones being updated every day or so. Many chapters end on true cliff-hangers; and readers are included in the writing process. Writers include disclaimers about copyright ownership and many write author notes at the beginning and end of each chapter (many of which are very entertaining in themselves). The writers invite their readers to review each chapter and sometimes even to suggest pointers for the narrative arc. ‘Beta’ readers, who qualify for the role by being experienced fanfiction writers themselves, edit the chapters before they are posted. An incredible community is built around the stories, and Tumblr and Twitter are alive with cross blogging, reviews, and accolades for favourite writers. The popularity of individual stories or writers largely depends on discovery provided by the web through reader recommendations, both on the fanfiction sites and on social media. Once a year or so, readers vote on the best fanfiction in a number of categories, and there are curated lists of recommendations too. And disclaimers are included at the beginning of each chapter, with many being very entertaining.

On Monday, Microsoft entered the world of tablets with Surface, announced in Los Angeles. It's Microsoft hardware designed for Microsoft software, with two models, the consumer-friendly Surface RT and the Surface Pro, meant for professionals. The prices were not announced.

Responding to the new digital nature of the book business, HarperCollins has restructured its sales organization, moving analytics into the sales department, making several promotions and letting go of about half a dozen employees.

According to a company announcement from Josh Marwell, president of sales, the sales reorganization is meant to help the New York-based publisher analyze data more efficiently, price books more intelligently and better understand market dynamics. To that end, the sales analytics department will become part of the sales department.

Here are two articles that expressly discuss pirated music, but a lot of the same issues of morality and artist compensation apply to any pirated media—movies, games, and, yes, e-books. They make an interesting presentation of two sides of the piracy argument: what can be done to get artists paid for their music?

The pieces reminded me that though there is some element of the miraculous in the rise of e-books and e-ink and tablet computers that put the power of god and all the information in the world literally at your fingertips, there is still untapped magic in the printed book.

In early April the Pew Internet & American Life Project released a report about about ebook usage in the United States.

Although libraries were mentioned/discussed throughout this report, the primary focus of the report was not libraries.

Today, Pew Internet is out with a NEW report that focuses solely on library patron (public library patrons to be specific) usage of ebooks and some related issues. Kudos to Pew for the broad picture since libraries are about more than ebooks.

Based on November’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), Camp NaNoWriMo provides the online support, tracking tools, and hard deadline to help you write the rough draft of your novel in a month… other than November!

Camp NaNoWriMo was established in 2011 as a project of the Office of Letters and Light, the parent 501(c)(3) nonprofit to National Novel Writing Month, and Script Frenzy, and the Young Writers Program. 2012 Camp sessions will take place in June and August.

What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month’s time.

Who: You! We can’t do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let’s write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.

Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era’s most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.

When: You can sign up anytime to add your name to the roster. Writing begins 12:00:01 AM on June 1, and again on August 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by 11:59:59 PM on the last day of the month. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins.

17 de junho de 2012

When e-textbooks were first introduced, they were supposed to be the wave of the future, and experts thought we’d see e-reader-toting students littering college campuses, and of course being adopted in droves by online university students. But they haven’t taken off quite as expected: according to market research firm Student Monitor, only about 11% of college students have bought e-textbooks. So what happened? Here, we’ll explore several reasons why students aren’t yet warming up to the idea of e-textbooks today.

When it comes to books you could say that we’re living in a paradox of choice. Yes, books are cheaper and more readily available than ever,; but libraries are being closed and serious thinking is being crowded out by excessive materialism. I wouldn’t be where I am today without the protected calm space of a well-tended local library. Libraries are the universities of the masses and we lose them at our peril.

New data from Pricewaterhouse Coopers’ Global Entertainment and Media Outlook projects that e-books will make up 50 percent of the U.S. trade book market by 2016. What will happen in the rest of the world during that time? PwC gave paidContent an exclusive look at their e-book data, and here are some of their predictions.

Recently, a study suggested that enhanced ebooks, which allow kids to interact with stories by swiping or tapping text, may be detrimental to developing literacy and memory. The children in the study sample apparently found it harder to recall plot details from enhanced ebooks, focusing more on the demands of the device they were using than the story they read. Drawing an ancient, creaky, anecdotal parallel with my own experience, this makes some sense to me. I recall almost no plot detail from the Famous Five game books I once played, only the physical sensations of handling dice, compass-wheels, picnic boxes, maps. What they developed was muscle memory, rather than mental.

Net sales revenue from eBooks have surpassed hardcover books in the first quarter of 2012.

According to the March Association of American Publishers (AAP) net sales revenue report (collecting data from 1,189 publishers), adult eBook sales were $282.3 million while adult hardcover sales counted $229.6 million during the first quarter of 2012. During the same period last year, hardcover accounted for $335 million in sales while eBooks logged $220.4 million.

But to a large extent, it really is the best of times for publishing. We have a lot of potential to connect more people with more ideas more efficiently and quickly than ever before. We have more people reading and writing than ever before, though (like publishing) literacy skies are also in a permanent downward trajectory according to generations of chickens little.

There are challenges, particularly as patterns of distribution are disrupted and new ones emerge. New possibilities carry costs and many are inevitably going to be failures. Integrating new options into the way people discover, use, and contribute to the record of scholarship can be exhausting, and someone who hears about a new novel may have trouble getting it because it’s not available through their library, their favorite bookstore can’t carry it, it’s in the wrong ebook format, or it’s only available to people living in a different geographic region, which seems insane since their Facebook friends who are raving about it have no trouble expressing themselves from a different continent. There are more choices, but they come with new and perplexing limits, and the whole thing is changing so fast it’s wearing.

I’m worried about the manipulation of us all through technology and I worry that we’re handing over power to companies that don’t necessarily have writers and readers at their heart. It’s about code and format, not about why we might read War and Peace or Mort d’Arthur. Yes, there are many changes in technology, but I don’t believe the human heart changes. The idea that we all have to engage in the same way now is erroneous.

First, Alan now has current info on the costs of the EBM and how it’s generating money. It turns out his older info was heavily pessimistic; the device is more profitable than he calculated. According to OnDemand Books, most bookstores with an EBM use it to create between 7 thousand and 14 thousand books a year. Based on current cost estimates, that’s enough income to pay off the investment in one to two years. This makes it a far better investment than before.

But there’s a catch. It turns out that the booksellers aren’t using the EBMs to print books from the OnDemand Books catalog (HarperCollins, Lightning Source, Google Books); no, most are operating the device as a mini print shop. It looks like 90% or so the books printed the first year come from walk-ins – local folks who bring their own file and want a few copies of their own book.

In Worldreader's first test, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development at six schools in Ghana starting in 2010, the group found that primary-school students who got Kindles increased their performance on standardized reading tests from about 13% to 16%.

For kids who develop a love for reading, there is another benefit that is hard to quantify: a seemingly endless library. "I can access every book I want to read very quickly," says Eperence Uwera, a 13-year-old Rwandan refugee at the Humble School. "I would love to go [home] with the Kindle during the holidays."

New York Times E-Book Best Sellers

A version of this list appears in the June 24, 2012 issue of The New York Times Book Review. Rankings reflect sales for the week ending June 9, 2012.